Grey Literature – The Chameleon of Information Resources

Abstract

This paper describes grey literature, its origins, definitions and the role of grey literature in modern digital age and scholarly communication. Grey literature plays an important role in the rapid and timely distribution of in-depth, recent, scientific and technical information, and also provides access to a broad range of information and often contains new ideas. Furthermore, grey literature is an important source of original research and up to date information, although the lack of peer review and formal publication standards must be taken into account during an evaluation process. Research that is not published in journals but available in other formats (such as reports, theses or conference proceedings) is often more detailed, more recent and sometimes more rapidly disseminated. In this paper we will analyze the role of 2014 Pisa Declaration on Policy Development for Grey Literature Resources and its contribution to better understanding and recognizing the role of grey literature as an essential resource in scholarly communication, research, policy making and a key source of evidence, argument, innovation, and understanding in many disciplines. The last part of this paper will investigate the relations between grey literature and scientific heritage, by introducing a set of criteria for the scientific heritage collections in order to define them as a grey literature.